In Maximizing Revenue vs Minimizing Cost I discuss how community is inherently oriented around cost-minimization rather than revenue-maximization, and this process of cost-minimization is synonymous to building or sustaining autonomy. I argue that “cutting costs” means eliminating external dependencies either because they’re unnecessary or through sharing, self-servicing, and prevention instead.
This process of continually re-orienting towards dependency reduction seems highly aligned with “austerity” as discussed in Tools in Conviviality. In contrast, corporations and governments have an incentive to promote dependency, because their incentives are towards maximizing revenue, which is inherently extractive, but not inherently bad. One benefit of such dependency is economies of scale.
In the dichotomy I lay out, community acts as an “agent of autonomy” and institutions act as “agents of dependency” for humans, and together act as countervailing forces that dynamically strike the right balance of autonomy and dependency. This dynamic equilibrium may offer both scale and conviviality without them being inherently at odds.